NGN Forum/IMS Forum Launches Plugfest 9 and New Technical Working Groups in 2010

By Michael Khalilian

The NGN and IMS Forums’ Plugfests are the industry’s only interoperability events covering NGN services over wireless 3G, 4G, LTE, WiMAX, wireline xDSL, cable, fiber optics broadband and IMS architectures. We are pleased to announce that the diameter and control plane technical working group and interoperability group successfully completed their initial guideline documents and testing/IOT activities at Plugfest 8 in October 2009. The forum technical and business group is now progressing to the next stage of releasing all the test documentation and planning for the next Plugfest event. Our next IMS Plugfest and NGN Plugfest interoperability test event, Plugfest 9, will take place on first week of June 2010 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, N.H. The NGN Forum and IMS Forum themes for this Plugfest are NGN network and IMS rich applications deployment. Topics under consideration include:

• IMS core, CSCF, AS, HSS, policy;
• Inter- and intra-network testing areas of key interest including billing services interdomain scenarios, roaming users,    visited networks scenarios, applications presence, voice, video, user agents;
• SDP/rich communications services/voice features and IMS applications;
• VoIP/SIP/QoS;
• security and reliability;
• billing – offline charging and online charging;
• control plane and diameter;
• voice over LTE/4G;
• IP video (IPTV);
• wireless and smart grids;
• messaging, IP traffic, presence, IM and termination, integration;
• implementation of convergence: integrating legacy to NGN;
• transition from 3G to 4G LTE and WiMAX;
• metrics for standard sets of SIP call flows in IMS and NGN;
• IPv6;
• and others.

We will define network topologies based on the participants' requirements for these tests. We are also excited about the IP BSS/OSS and security architecture guidelines to be released this month.

Planning is well under way at the NGN Forum technical working groups, which have been holding regular joint sessions for the planning of Plugfest 9. The latest additions under review to add to the technical working groups plan for 2010 are going to be service delivery platform, IP video, IMS BSS, NGN security and 4G. These new groups will be announced in early 2010. Any company that is interested in participating in research or interoperability testing is welcome to contact the Admin@NGNForum. org.

Starting this year, working groups will meet every other week to define their objectives and do Plugfest planning.

The NGN Forum and IMS Forum are the only industry associations dedicated to interoperability and certification of IP multimedia subsystem and next-generation network applications and services for fixed, mobile and cable networks. Participation in NGN IMS Plugfests and technical working groups is open to all companies. We look forward to your participation in our 2010 working groups and in Plugfests. For more information please contact Info@NGNForum. org or visit our Web sites, listed below.

Michael Khalilian is chairman and president of the NGN Forum and IMS Forum (www.NGNForum.org/www.IMSForum.org).

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